Unless charged, tainted trio free to play says Butt

London:

Pakistan's tainted trio of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamir could play in the upcoming ODI series against England despite facing allegations of 'spot-fixing' after PCB Chairman Ijaz Butt said that unless charged, the three are "free to do whatever they want."

Butt said the trio, implicated in a spot-fixing scandal "exposed" by a British tabloid last week, could play in the two Twenty20s and five one-dayers starting Sunday.

"They will miss the first match and then we will see what will happen in the future," Butt told 'BBC Sports'.

"They will be free to play immediately, not only in the one-day series. As far as we are concerned, unless they are charged they are free to do whatever they want," he said. Butt lashed out at the media for its coverage of the scandal, saying,"the initial first couple of days they were saying match-fixing, match-fixing, match-fixing and now all of a sudden the tune is spot-fixing, spot-fixing, spot-fixing without telling the public what that is."

Butt's statement is in clear defiance of the ICC's diktat in which the world governing body for the sport had told the PCB to drop the three players.

"I think the logical thing for anybody would be that they do not partake because they have been, allegedly, involved in these corrupt practices," ICC's chief executive Haroon Lorgat had stated after the scandal broke out.